


past the party lights (we can finally be alone)

by liadan14



Series: lover with a radar phone [11]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy is the godfather, Carol and Tommy have a kid, F/M, Future Fic, M/M, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Relationship Reveal, Secret Relationship, Slice of Life, Thanksgiving, steve is the team mom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:07:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23069710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liadan14/pseuds/liadan14
Summary: Snapshots of Thanksgiving 1992In which Steve takes the holidays very seriously and Billy is a supportive boyfriend. Featuring everyone else and their relationship drama.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler, Will Byers/Dustin Henderson
Series: lover with a radar phone [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571581
Comments: 17
Kudos: 202





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The second Thanksgiving fic. I should just rename this the Thanksgiving verse or something. 
> 
> A few context notes if you want them/haven't read the rest of the series: For the purposes of this fic, everyone has moved out of Hawkins except Joyce and Hopper, and Steve's mom is back in Hawkins. Steve and Billy live in Chicago, as does Robin. El has moved to Boston to get a degree in fashion and to be with Mike, who's at MIT. Lucas and Max are married and living in Chicago. Carol and Tommy are married and living in Chicago. They have a son and Billy's the godfather. Steve and his mom have a fairly strained relationship, but they're trying. Nancy and Jonathan are in New York. Will and Dustin are both getting degrees in the LA area and they live together.
> 
> That secret relationship tag is my crack, people. I may never write anything ever again that doesn't use that tag.

**11:30 PM November 26th, 1992  
Steve, Billy, Will and Dustin in the living room **

It’s past eleven when Steve notices. He’s all-but passed out on the less intact comfy chair, the one that’s so worn out they’re really only hanging onto it because Billy hates buying furniture and also change, calves sore from spending the last two days standing in the kitchen, head woozy from red wine and tryptophan. 

Dustin and Will are both in sweatpants and t-shirts already, having elected to get changed into their sleepwear as soon as everyone left. The couch is folded out now that the assortment of mismatched tables and chairs that makes up Billy and Steve’s Thanksgiving set-up has been cleared away. Steve’s glad Billy thought to get the spare blankets and pillows sorted out yesterday, before everyone got here, because he’s having a hard time seeing himself getting up in the next hour or two and Billy’s kind of dozing lightly, blinking his eyes open every now and again when the Christmas ads on TV get too loud.

Dustin’s sitting on the floor, leaning back against the couch, legs spread out in front of him, using his hands and his solo cup half-full of wine to explain his current experiment.

Steve has no idea what he’s talking about.

Will, who’s sprawled across the couch, half-listening to Dustin, half watching the TV, reaches down to rub his hand over the top of Dustin’s head.

“Maybe you should slow down a bit, honey,” he says.

Dustin’s eyes slide shut, and he hums. “Sorry,” he says, leaning back into Will’s touch. 

“It’s fine,” Steve says. “I think I wouldn’t get this if I were sober and you were slower.”

“Sure you would,” Dustin says. “It’s really just a question of reducing the friction and increasing—”

“How long have you two been dating?” Steve asks, mostly because he really can’t keep pretending he’s followed any of what Dustin’s talking about.

“Couple months,” Will says. His hand is still in Dustin’s hair.

“Six,” Dustin says. He clears his throat. “Six months.”

**1 PM, November 26th, 1992  
Steve, Billy, Carol and Tommy Jr. in the kitchen**

The sweet potatoes aren’t coming out right. 

The sweet potatoes aren’t coming out right, and the turkey’s smoking in the oven in a way it’s never done before and Steve hasn’t even checked if the cranberries set. 

“Jesus Christ,” Carol says, leaning against the kitchen counter. “Is it always like this?”

“Every year,” Billy tells her, hitching Tommy Jr. up higher on his hip. Tommy grabs at the wire frame of Billy’s glasses with his pudgy hands. “Hands off the merchandise, big guy,” Billy says, trying to duck his head away.

“Baby, you’re a big boy now,” Carol says. “No grabbing Uncle Billy’s stuff.”

“I want glasses,” Tommy says.

“Sure,” Carol tells him absently. “Seriously, it’s like this every year?”

“Glasses, glasses!” Tommy cheers.

“Yup,” Billy says. “It’s gonna be fine, Stevie.”

“The sweet potatoes aren’t right.”

“They look like they did last year.”

“The sweet potatoes are Will’s favorite.”

Billy sighs. He sets Tommy Jr. down gently. “You,” he says, “are so grown up, I’m gonna have to stop pickin’ you up all the time.”

Tommy looks torn between being proud of being grown up and throwing a fit at the threat of not being picked up anymore. He settles on going to sit on the floor by his mom’s feet, where he left his toy truck.

Billy comes up behind Steve and wraps his arms around Steve from behind. “It’s going to be delicious,” he says. “It always is. You worry too much. Anyway, you’ve got me here to help, and Carol, and the real MVP, Tommy. Put us to work.”

“Yeah,” Carol says. “Just, nothing that I could chip a nail doing. I just got them done.”

Tommy Jr. makes car noises with his mouth.

**5 PM, November 26th, 1992  
Everyone in the living room**

Will and Dustin are the last to arrive. They’re pretty late, but they also called from a rest stop somewhere in Kansas more than five hours ago to say that traffic was terrible.

“Just throw your stuff in the guest room with Nancy and Jonathan’s things,” Steve tells them, giving them each a quick, one-armed hug. “But hurry up, Hopper’s feral when he’s hungry.”

Will makes a face, probably because this is the first year that Hop is his mom’s official date rather than just her grown-up friend everyone knew she was sleeping with.

“Not just Hopper,” Carol calls out from the living room, “You’ve got a pregnant lady here who’s been waiting on food for hours.”

“Behave yourself, woman,” Tommy tells her, but the way Steve can see his hand resting on her still barely-swollen belly through the door belies his tone. Tommy Jr. is sitting on his dad’s lap, refreshed and excited for dinner after crashing for a full hour on Billy’s side of their bed, only waking up when his dad finally got here after having to work all of Thanksgiving day to store up his vacation days.

“We’ve got you two sharing the pull-out couch,” Steve says as he basically pushed Will and Dustin down the hall, gets their stuff dropped off in the guest room and then gets them into their seats. “I hope you don’t mind sharing.”

“Sharing’s good,” Will says.

“We like sharing,” Dustin says. “Yup, sharing.”

“You have not gotten less weird in California,” Max tells them. She’s too far away on the long table set up in the living room to say hello properly, so she settles for being rude.

“Happy Thanksgiving to you, too,” Dustin says with as much dignity as he can muster. It’s not a lot, but it goes pretty much unnoticed anyway, since Joyce and Jonathan are busy getting out of their chairs and disrupting the entire order of things to hug Will. 

Steve’s not freaking out or anything. It just took Billy and Carol the better part of an hour to set up all the tables and chairs so all sixteen of them would be able to sit, let alone eat.

Steve’s ma, who’s sitting in the corner right by the head of the table (Steve’s spot, so he can get up and deal with the food), takes a long sip of her wine. Steve guesses it’s weird to see a family like the Byers, who like each other _so much_.

Joyce pulls away from Will to ruffle Dustin’s hair. “You taking good care of my boy out there?” She asks.

Dustin, still flushed from the cold and Max’s teasing, laughs tensely. “You bet I am, Mrs. Byers,” he says.

Because Will is too good for this world, he says nothing.

“Okay,” Steve says, clapping his hands together. “Time to eat! Ma, you want to help me bring in the dishes?”

His mom smiles at him, and Steve still kind of hates that it makes him feel good inside to make her proud, but on the plus side, Billy’s giving him this look that makes Steve feel like maybe he’s proud, too, so it’s probably worth it.

**8:30 AM, November 27th 1992  
Jonathan and Nancy in the kitchen**

Steve and Billy were still in the living room with Will and Dustin when Nancy and Jonathan went to bed last night, even though they had taken a late-night stroll through Steve and Billy’s neighborhood for Jonathan to take some pictures. It’s no wonder they’re up earlier than everyone else in the apartment.

“God, I don’t know how Steve does this every year,” Nancy says, examining the piles of dishes all over the kitchen. 

Jonathan considers mentioning the harried look around Steve’s eyes for most of the day, or the way Billy seems to always have his hands full with something in an effort to calm Steve down. In the end, he elects to say, “Steve’s a good cook.”

“Yeah. We should do some of the dishes.”

Jonathan sighs internally, but he knew the conversation was headed there.

“It was weird, seeing Carol and Tommy,” Nancy says eventually, handing him a plate to dry.

“Yeah?”

“They were so…normal.”

Jonathan snorts.

“I had kind of built her up in my head as this huge bitch,” Nancy admits, “But she’s just someone’s mom, now.”

“You sound kind of jealous,” Jonathan says. He’s treading on eggshells here and he knows it.

“I wouldn’t say jealous,” Nancy says. “Surprised, I guess? They looked so happy together. I kind of thought someone who put so much energy into making me feel bad about myself eight years ago wouldn’t be…happy.”

“She was nice to you last night.”

Nancy scoffs. “She still hates me. But it’s nice that they’re so happy with the whole…everything.”

Jonathan says nothing.

“Look, you’ll tell me if you change your mind, right?” She asks him.

He debates playing dumb, asking what he’s supposed to have changed his mind about.

He decides against it.

“I haven’t. You’ll tell me, too, right?”

“I haven’t either,” she says. “Promise you’ll tell, though?”

“Promise.”

They press their palms together, faded scars from when they were stupid, reckless, brave teenagers baiting death squishing against each other through the soap bubbles on Nancy’s hands from the dishwater.

Jonathan lets her keep washing dishes in silence for a while, drying whatever she hands him and considering the back of her neck.

“You know,” he says.

“I know?” She prompts when he doesn’t continue.

“You know, just because we don’t want a house and kids and all that doesn’t mean we can’t…” he trails off. He’s not much good at this stuff, he’s more likely to say the wrong thing and get her pissed off. He didn’t even buy a ring or anything, it’s just an idea he’s had a few times.

Nancy turns to look at him. “Doesn’t mean we can’t make it a little more official?” She asks, and she’s holding back a smile. Maybe he’s not the only one who’s had the idea.

“Yeah,” he says. “I mean, it doesn’t have to be a big deal, if you don’t want.”

“We could just go to city hall,” she says. “Let our parents know by mail.”

“It would be quick,” he says. “No fuss. No party.”

“It would be just us.”

“It wouldn’t really change anything.”

“It would change things a little.”

“Maybe in a good way?”

“Yeah.”

Jonathan can’t stop grinning while they wash the rest of the dishes. 

**7 PM, November 26th 1992  
Everyone in the living room**

“Don’t challenge Dustin,” Will tells Mike, almost begging. “He doesn’t have a gag reflex anyway.”

Dustin’s grip on his spoon slips and it clatters onto his plate noisily before Mike can fill it with Billy’s extra-special hot sauce to see if Dustin can, in fact, eat a whole spoonful of it.

“He was keg king for, like, three years running in high school,” Will says, ears flushed pink. “You know this. I really don’t want to see him eat more gross stuff just because he can.”

Billy, grimacing, double checks that the toddler in his arms is fast asleep before saying, “Still can’t believe you beat my record, Henderson.”

“It’s not exactly a fair fight if one of you doesn’t have a gag reflex,” Nancy points out, taking a very deep sip of her wine while Carol and Tommy hunt around the living room for all the toys Tommy Jr. has left lying around in the last hour or two.

Hop clears his throat loudly. “I’m thinkin’ now’s a good time for us all to stop discussing all the _underage drinking_ you all used to do.” He says it sharply, but there are four empty beer cans in front of him. 

Joyce and Steve’s mom, who’ve been having a hot gossip session about the current PTA of Hawkins High for a good hour and a half, raise their own glasses in agreement. 

“Can we also stop talking about Dustin’s gag reflex?” Lucas asks.

“Hear, hear,” Max agrees.

Will’s ears flush pinker.

**10 AM, November 27th, 1992  
Steve, Billy and Jonathan in the kitchen**

Steve’s pouring himself a cup of coffee over the sink when Billy gets back in. His hair is sticking up all over the place and he’s not wearing a shirt. 

“ _Jesus fucking Christ_ ,” Steve gasps when Billy wraps his freezing cold hand around his middle. 

Face pressed into the crook of Steve’s neck, Billy says, “You’re so warm.”

“That’s ‘cause I just got out my cocoon,” Steve says, relaxing back against him. “You coulda stayed and not gone for a run at ass o’clock on Black Friday like a lunatic.”

“Gotta keep my girlish figure,” Billy says. 

“You don’t smell girlish.”

“You’d still fuck me.”

Jonathan nervously clears his throat in the hallway. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Nah,” Billy says. He’s totally relaxed against Steve, chin hooked over Steve’s shoulder. A little thrill settles in the base of Steve’s belly at how okay this is, now, here, in the privacy of their own home with only their friends as witnesses. “Picked up some bagels if you wanna have breakfast.”

“Thanks.” Jonathan smiles awkwardly as he enters the kitchen and sets his own mug, empty, down in the sink.

“Hey, thanks for doing the dishes,” Steve says.

“No problem. The least we could do.” Jonathan’s smile widens to something a little less forced, as if the thought of doing the dishes makes him happy. What a weird guy.

With a kiss to Steve’s neck, Billy pulls away. “Tell that to all the other dipshits,” he says. “No offense to your brother.”

“I’ve been calling him a dipshit since the day he was born,” Jonathan says. “Want me to get him up for breakfast?”

Steve’s taking a long, heavenly sip from his coffee, so he misses the chance to do damage control. 

Billy says, “Yeah, go for it.”

What a dick.

Jonathan goes for it. 

A second later, he comes back into the kitchen, without having woken Will or Dustin, a frown line drawn down his forehead.

“Hey, guys,” he says. “Uh, is it just me, or.” He stops, runs a hand over the back of his neck. 

“Hmm?” Billy asks, raising his eyebrows up comically.

“Is Will sleeping with Dustin?” Jonathan asks.

“Well, they had to share the couch, so—“

“Oh my god, Billy.” Steve says.

Billy grins, eyes sharp.

“Sure seems like they are, Jonny-boy,” he says.

“Ugh,” Jonathan groans. “Don’t call me that.”

“Is it a problem?” Steve asks. “Will and Dustin? I think they’re pretty cute.”

Jonathan shakes his head quickly. “No,” he says. “No, it’s fine. Weird, but fine. I just had this whole thing I was gonna do, when Will finally brought someone to one of these things. You know, the whole, _hurt him and I’ll end you_ thing.”

“Good luck trying that with Dustin,” Steve says darkly into his coffee.

“I’ve known Dustin since he was nine,” Jonathan says. “I think Will’s more likely to hurt him than the other way around.”

“Will’s pretty serious about it,” Billy says. He’s starting to sweat in earnest, now, in from the cold and still fired up from his run. Nancy’s taking way too long in the shower.

“Oh, so you knew?” Steve asks, pissed.

Billy fills himself up a glass of water, drains it, more to keep himself occupied than because he really needs it. “We talked, a while back. I guessed we were talking about Dustin. Last night confirmed it.”

“So it’s serious, then?” Jonathan asks.

“What’s serious?” Nancy asks, walking into the kitchen, towelling her hair dry. 

Billy takes the out and runs for the shower.

**5:30 PM, November 26th, 1992  
Everyone in the living room**

Mike stabs a green bean off El’s plate as she scoops up some of his stuffing.

“Good,” she says in answer to Billy’s question about how studying fashion is treating her.

“Gee,” he says. “That it?”

El shrugs. “I like it in Boston. Mike’s there. School’s good. Can I eat now?”

Mike steals another green bean. She takes more stuffing, glaring at him. “Only fair trades,” she says.

“Only fair trades,” Mike repeats. He takes another green bean.

“Sweet potatoes are running low,” Lucas says. His mouth is full.

“Gross,” Max tells him.

“I got it,” Steve says, reaching for the almost-empty dish of sweet potatoes.

“Let me,” Billy says. “You need to sit down and eat something.”

“I got it,” Steve repeats.

He disappears into the kitchen to refill the sweet potatoes.

Steve’s mom fans herself with her paper napkin. “Wow,” she says. “There’s so much going on here.”

“Yeah,” Billy says. “It’s a mess, but it’s tradition.”

“And Steve does all the cooking?”

Billy takes a bite of mashed potato and nods. “Nancy and Robin usually bring desserts.”

Robin and Nancy salute each other across the table. They’ve reached a truce after the first year, when they almost came to blows over there being two pumpkin pies.

“Wow,” Steve’s mom says. “I never knew Steve was such a…” 

Billy glares at her. 

She never knew Steve was a good cook because he learned by necessity, when she wasn’t there. She seems to realize this herself and stops short. “I never realized Steve took the holidays so seriously,” she says.

“It’s important to him,” Billy says. He’s digging his nails into his palm to stop himself saying something dumb. “Very important.”

Steve’s mom nods. 

It had been a risk, inviting her, and Lucas had grumbled for most of last week that it would be weird to have her and Carol and Tommy there, people who never had to throw fireworks into an interdimensional monster, who never got possessed or kidnapped or murdered horribly sat right alongside them on the day they eat their own weight in holiday food and pointedly don’t talk about how thankful they all are to still be alive.

Steve comes back in. He’s taken off his sweater, because there are sixteen people in their apartment and it’s ridiculously warm. He’s carrying a dish so ludicrously laden with his extra-special sweet-potato mash with brown sugar and walnuts on top that Billy’s afraid it’ll end up on the floor. 

“Thank you for inviting me, Steve,” Steve’s mom says when he’s sitting again. “It really means a lot to me.”

Billy reconsiders never inviting her again.

Dustin takes a giant helping of sweet potatoes and turns his plate so the sweet potatoes are close enough to Will that Will can just eat them straight off of Dustin’s plate instead of getting his own.

**8 PM, November 26th, 1992  
Everyone in the living room**

“Thank _god_ they’re gone,” Max says dramatically, resting her head on the table. The door had just shut behind Steve’s mom, hot on the heels of Carol and both Tommys, Jr. and Sr.

Steve frowns.

“That’s rude,” El says. “Right?”

“It’s just us, now,” Max says. “You get to be rude around family.”

“They’re not that bad,” Steve says.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Max says. “You know I think Carol’s the best.”

Robin, laying on the floor, patting her stomach, says, “Carol is the best. Her offspring is a demon.”

Billy glares at her. “I’m warning you.”

She waves a hand. “Yeah, yeah, Tommy Jr. is a thousand times cooler than Tommy Sr.”

“Damn straight.”

“Was it really so bad, having them here this year?” Steve asks. 

“Of course not!” Joyce says. “It was great. And honey, it’s your apartment, and you do all the cooking, you get to decide who’s going to be here.”

“It’s just weird when it’s people who don’t know about the Upside Down,” Mike says.

A hush falls over the room.

“Right,” Billy drawls, unable to handle the suddenly serious tone. “Because we talk about it so much when they’re not here.”

“We _could_ talk about it, though,” Mike argues. “It’s like the opportunity’s gone.”

Hopper drains another can of beer in the time it takes the friendly discussion to turn into a shouting match. Joyce elbows him in the side when he burps, loudly.

“Will, c’mon, you must be on my side,” Mike says imploringly. So far, he’s only got Max to really agree with him, Dustin and Steve taking the opposing side. Everyone else seems to be on the fence.

“I think changes can be good,” Will says, surprisingly even and sure. “Anyway, Tommy Jr. is Billy’s godson, they should get to spend the holidays together. No one wants to hear about how gross the demodogs were _again_ , right?”

Mike looks so utterly shocked at Will’s betrayal that the discussion fizzles out entirely.

**9 PM, November 27th 1992  
Billy and Steve in their bedroom**

“You sure you don’t mind staying in tonight?” Steve yawns against his pillow.

Billy snorts. “I do not need to go to board game night at the student union with Robin and the kids,” he says. “I’m not a fucking student anymore. Anyway, you’re beat.”

“Yeah, but you can go places without me.”

“Eh,” Billy shrugs. “Don’t wanna.” He flops down on the bed next to Steve and switches the TV on. It’s the little one from their old apartment, where PBS flickers a little bit sometimes. The big one is in the living room, but Steve can't face having to get up and go to bed, he's going to fall asleep before ten anyway. Billy switches over to MTV and turns the volume down.

“Think Will’n Dustin have told them all yet?”

Billy sinks a hand into Steve’s hair, drawing slow circles across his scalp with his fingertips. “No one’s blowing up the phone lines yet,” he says.

“Can’t believe you knew before me,” Steve says. He sounds miffed, and muffled by the pillow.

“What can I say,” Billy says smugly. “The kids, they see me as their Yoda.”

“That’s the one who looks like Kermit, right?” Steve asks, entirely to piss Billy off.

They let the hum of Belinda Carlisle’s latest music video settle through the room for a while. Steve wonders how long it will last, because Billy’s hated every single thing she’s released since the Go-Go’s split up on principle.

“Good Thanksgiving?” Billy asks eventually.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I’m just beat, now.”

“You gotta let me help more,” Billy says.

“It’s my whole…thing, I don’t wanna make you…”

“I _want_ you to make me,” Billy says. “That’s what I’m here for.”

Steve sighs. “I guess you can do the stuffing next year,” he says. He turns over onto his side so he can rest his head on Billy’s chest. 

“Promise?” Billy asks.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Promise.”

“Good,” Billy says. “Now change the channel, what the fuck is this shit.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The outtakes, or, what's going on with Will and Dustin during Thanksgiving '92

In California, they had agreed this would be the weekend they would tell everyone. 

“You’re sure?” Dustin had asked, standing in front of the closets. They had moved both closets into what had once been Dustin’s room at the start of the semester so they could convert Will’s old room into a study. The only downside was that they both hated sorting laundry and mostly threw all their clothes into whatever closet had more space at random. 

Will had nodded, more focused on getting at the sweaters all the way in the back of the left closet. “Yeah, it’s time,” he said. “Now give me a hand here, why the fuck are all our warm clothes so far away.”

“Because we live in the land of no seasons,” Dustin had responded, but he’d pressed a kiss to Will’s cheek and gone to get a chair to stand on.

They’d figured they would have the whole drive to Chicago to figure out _how_ , exactly, they would go about telling everyone.

That ends up not panning out at all. 

First, the drive out of LA is awful. Driving in LA is always awful, but on the day before Thanksgiving it’s ridiculous. Dustin swears up a blue streak and then streaks in just about every other color possible.

Then, Will’s distracted charting a route off the main freeways using their road map.

Then, they spend a good couple hours enjoying the weirdness of rural radio stations in central America. By the time they pull into a motel for the night, they're no further than they were when they left their apartment.

Will doesn’t really have it in him to ruin the drive, is the thing. He’s been looking forward to it all week. Steve always gives him this commiserating look when they get where they’re going, usually Chicago or Hawkins, and he gets out of the car with Dustin. Will has no idea why. Dustin never runs out of things to talk about, and long drives are one of the best times to listen to him. Especially when they’ve both been busy, which they have, with midterms, it’s great. Dustin has so many thoughts on random shit like how to improve traffic flow on intersections, why car headlights look like eyes, why artificial intelligence is the way of the future.

Sometimes, Will has things to say, too. The headlights thing reminds him of his developmental psychology class, and Dustin listens to him explain some central theories and talk about Piaget and before they know it, they’re trapped in the worst holiday traffic in Kansas and haven’t gotten any closer to coming up with a game plan.

In Illinois, Will says, “Maybe we don’t have to do it tonight. Steve’s mom will be there, it might be weird anyway.”

“Yeah,” Dustin says. “Good call.”

Will’s almost sure, a half a dozen times that night, that someone has found them out anyway, that he hasn’t watched his mouth well enough, that it must be obvious in the way the backs of their hands brush against each other with every breath, in the way they look to each other for support first and foremost when telling any story, in the way Will can’t quite help himself looking a little too long when Dustin stretches, shirt riding up to reveal skin.

It’s almost an anti-climax when only Steve calls them on it.

By the evening after Thanksgiving, Will feels weird. Wrong. Dustin’s been quiet today, and that usually means he’s chewing on something well-intentioned and self-deprecating. Jonathan’s been more…Jonathan than usual, by turns skittish and awkward or joyful and kind. Will’s mom had stopped by, too, to take them both out for dinner, just the three Byers, before game night with the Party and Robin. It’s tense in a way it hasn’t been in years, if only because Will is holding things back and he hates that. He hates how it kind of felt like a slog, coming back to the Midwest this time. In freshman year, he spent his entire summer break at home, living on his mom’s cooking and sleeping in past noon every day. This last year, he’d only been home for two weeks, and he’d spent kind of a lot of that time with Dustin.

Will ignores the feeling – spiders crawling on his liver, unease on the back of his neck – for as long as he can stand (9:30 PM, through dinner and a game of Clue), and then, watching Mike set up Monopoly, he realizes abruptly that there is absolutely no reason to do this to himself.

“What’s wrong?” He murmurs to Dustin, sitting so close to him on the ratty couch in the dorm Robin is the RA of that it should be noticeable to everyone else.

Dustin shifts slightly. “Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

“Did you tell your family?”

“Not yet.”

“Are you going to?”

Will cocks his head to the side. “Yeah, of course.”

Dustin turns to look at him, eyes bright and a little panicked. “Really?” He asks.

“Yeah. I just…didn’t know how.”

“Because if you don’t want people to know—”

“Of course I want them to know,” Will says. 

“It seems kind of like you don’t.”

“Why would you think that?”

Dustin looks back at the Monopoly board. Max and Lucas are discussing – intently – who gets the dog figurine. Will really doesn’t understand why anyone wanted to play this game. “You haven’t exactly been…interested in telling people before.”

“We said slow,” Will reminds him.

“Yeah,” Dustin says. “But it’s been half a year, and I thought we were—good. Solid. If we’re not, that’s something we need to talk about, because—”

“We’re solid,” Will tells him.

“Are you sure, though?” Dustin asks. “Because—”

Will grabs his chin, stopping him from looking away again and also from talking. “Dustin,” he says, as patiently as he can muster. “I’m literally wearing your clothes right now. We slept in the same bed last night. We held hands during dessert at Thanksgiving dinner. The only reason they don’t know is because they’re not looking.”

Dustin smiles weakly. “I just got worried. I mean, Steve knows and my mom knows, and it’s up to you when you talk to…your people.”

“These guys are your people too, and it’s your decision, too,” Will reminds him.

“Well, I only moved—” Dustin starts, and Will isn’t going to listen to him put himself down for only having moved to Hawkins in the fourth grade again.

He kisses Dustin, a little off-center because Dustin is really bad at shutting the fuck up when kissing is supposed to happen. It’s still nice, though. California is great, but there’s something to be said for making out in winter clothes, the softness and cushion of them. Will might be wearing one of Dustin’s old camp sweatshirts, but Dustin’s wearing one of Will’s cable-knit sweaters, the one he wore thumbholes into while he was taking the SATs, and it’s such a good look on him.

It’s a good feel, too, when Will pulls away from Dustin’s mouth reluctantly and gathers him up in a hug.

“Ugh, I love you so much,” Dustin whispers against his ear, like he’s irritated at the depth of his own feelings.

“You, too,” Will tells him.

Their friends are watching, of course, when they look back. Will tells them, as if it's not obvious now, that they’re dating and they have been for a while.

It turns out, it’s not that hard.

While Max peppers them with questions and Lucas tries to decide if he thinks it’s weird or not, El calmly steals the dog figurine.

“I was looking, last night,” she explains serenely, when Max asks her why she’s not more shocked. 

(“Oh my god,” Max says, much later, in bed next to Lucas. “Dustin doesn’t have a gag reflex.”

“Gross,” Lucas says, and hits her with a pillow.)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Norah Jones' _The Long Way Home_.
> 
> If you want to check out the timeline for this series, [it's on my tumblr](https://bewires.tumblr.com/post/190383828850/timeline-for-some-dumb-fanfiction). Feel free to prompt me with more ideas, too, I'm slowly running out.
> 
> What did you think? I'm still very nervous about the whole Will/Dustin thing. It just made sense for who they were in this series to me I guess.


End file.
